UK gov. can't admit its mistake about wind farms so has lined up lots of hugely expensive and dirty diesel powered generators to fill in for wind-Delingpole

.
7/14/13, "Another day, another wind farm scandal," James Delingpole, UK Telegraph

"Perhaps you've seen his (Richard North's) latest scoop? I hope so for it's an absolute corker: the story of how the (UK) National Grid has been secretly forking out millions on diesel-generated power in order to stop the lights going out. And why does the National Grid need this hugely expensive, dirty energy available on standby? For all those occasions when the wind isn't blowing, is why. The greater the proportion of our total energy capacity taken up by wind, the more unstable our grid becomes. But rather than admit the scale of the problem (already causing havoc in places like Germany), the Coalition has had to persist in the charade that renewables are an essential part of our energy mix. So rather than scrap all wind projects – the only really sensible option – we instead have to go through the nonsense of having even more expensive energy in reserve (ie diesel generators) driving up our bills by another 5 per cent.

Anyway I co-wrote a story with the great North here today. The mighty Booker too has of course been on the case, most recently here. But for the full gory detail, as ever, the place to go is Eureferendum where you can read in full here, here and here about the eye-watering sums we are all being forced to stump up so that Dave can maintain his "greenest government ever" fantasy and to stop Ed Davey throwing his toys out of the pram with even more petulance and rage than he does already." via Lucianne

================================

Offshore wind farm leases are how the UK monarchy gets much of its income. The monarchy formerly had to beg the government for money but that's recently been changed. Much of the cash will now come from offshore wind farm leases:

6/26/13, "Queen's income set to rise for second year running," BBC

"Because it owns and manages the seabed around the UK out to the 12-mile limit, the Crown Estate is heavily involved in offshore wind farms, where it saw an extra 1GW of power come on 

stream, with around 300 new turbines erected offshore.

The Crown Estate also made £13.1m from cables and pipelines that cross its land.

As part of its overall property portfolio, it also owns the foreshore of almost half of the UK's coastline, although much of it is leased out to third parties."...

==========================

  6/26/13, "Queen scores record profit from booming London property," Reuters

"Crown Estate - owned by Queen Elizabeth - on Thursday said it made record profit in the year to March, thanks to the strong performance of its central London properties.
 
Crown Estate's 5.2 percent rise in profits to 252.6 million pounds gives the queen a 38 million pounds 2014/15 payout, pegged at 15 percent of the total by a 2012 law designed to link her income to the UK's economic health....

Owner of wind farms and most of Britain's sea bed along with its Regent Street properties, the company has outperformed the wider economy due to strong overseas interest in London property and the UK's growing reliance on green energy....

The Queen - whose payout rose 20 percent to 36 million this year - was previously paid by taxpayers through an allowance set by parliament and other government grants."...


=================================

Ed. note: This is why Prince Charles begs people to believe in global warming.

==================================

7/12/13, "Energy: million-pound government windfall when no wind blows," EUReferendum, Richard North

"The Government is set to make a windfall profit of hundreds of millions of pounds out of a lucrative scheme to sell power from thousands of the emergency diesel generators it owns to the National Grid. The cash will come from using them to guard against the times when the wind is too low to drive the expanding fleet of wind turbines, so staving off widespread blackouts.

Public buildings, including NHS hospitals, prisons, Army barracks and RAF bases, police and fire headquarters, schools and council offices equipped with emergency generators are to be asked to make them available on 20-minute standby to back-up the grid when supply is short. For this, they will be paid premium rates, soon to rise to the equivalent of £600 per Megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity produced.

This is more than 12 times the rate currently paid to ordinary power station operators, and six times the rate paid to inshore wind farm owners. Potentially, this makes Government-owed generators worth hundreds of millions to George Osborne. But it also represents another "stealth tax" on hard-pressed electricity consumers, brought about by the increasing reliance on wind power which is already heavily subsidised.

The scheme, managed by National Grid, is known as the Short Term Operational Reserve (STOR).  It is better known in the private sector, where it is part of what is sometimes called "Demand Response" or even "Demand Side Response" (DSR). But the Government involvement is the real explanation behind our report on the Guardian finding that four NHS hospitals had "signed up to a deal under which they will reduce demand at peak times by using diesel-fired generators"."....

.